At a Meeting of the PROTESTANTS OF IRELAND, held at the Mansion House, Dublin, on Thursday, August 14, 1834.

The Right Hon. the LORD MAYOR in the Chair.

THE circumstances under which we meet, and the animating addresses to which you have so fully responded, have taught you this stern but salutary truth, that now, for the protection of your dearest interests, for the maintenance of your religion, for defence of life, except in the resources which your own wisdom and union and resolution shall provide, you have no earthly dependence.

I am glad to find you receive the announcement as it should be received by men. Let me not be mistaken. Far be it from us to doubt the cordial friendship of our brethren in England. Even if it could for a moment be forgotten, the presence of the distinguished personage who has honored our meeting-the representative of what is best and noblest in England, representative of a class which has ever watched with most vigilant and most benevolent anxiety over the interests of their Protestant brethren here, would recal it to our remembrance. (A) But, that you should be benefited by the exertions of your friends, you must be true to yourselves. Your cause has been blackened by foul misrepresentations. You must be industrious to refute them; and, while they are in process of correction, you must be united, and prepared to meet the difficulties to which they now leave you exposed. England, you must remember, is not as she was. The moral pestilence of expediency has found, in her, a body prepared for it. That the stupor, in which she has yielded to pernicious counsel, and abused sound principle, will be broken, and that energies now dormant will be roused into wise action,

B

the dealings of Providence towards that favored country encourage us strongly to anticipate; but, if you are to be instrumental to that moral renovation, it may depend, so far as human means are effectual, on your use of the opportunities with which you have been mercifully favored, whether the occasion which calls out the spirit of old England, shall be a summons to avenge disasters which can never be repaired—to avenge, it may be, the blood of slaughtered Protestants-or a call to assist you in counteracting efforts calculated to produce irremediable evil; to stand at your side in preventing or in putting down barbarous insurrection.

In order to your having a more distinct view of the difficulties against which you should make provision, allow me, with all plainness of thought and speech, to suggest a contingency which it is of moment that you contemplate. Suppose the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland repealed; (even if you think such a result unlikely, yet for a moment let your imagination assist reason, in presenting it to you as possible-we shall soon see, whether, under existing circumstances, a reflecting man will think such aid necessary;) suppose repeal of the union effected. It might find you unprepared for its attendant dangers, or it might find you resolved and united.

If when separated from England you were found distracted among yourselves, do you imagine that your weakness and your adversaries' success would not summon into existence, or quicken into activity, hopes and claims, and projects, aiming at your utter overthrow? Do you imagine that you could find favor, or time to rally and unite? or do you not feel persuaded that policy might conspire with the impetuous malice of your least disguised enemies in accelerating movements which should not allow you a moment's pause to concert measures by which property could be secured or life defended? Your persecutors would be mistaken in their judgment of England. Their violence would provoke from her offended justice a dreadful retribution. But I can well understand that even crafty men may be wrought upon by the unsteadiness of the British Government to forget the British character, and to think that their crimes against the forsaken Protestants of this land, although they might become the objects.

of negotiation, and censure, and menace, would not be visited with a very exemplary vengeance. Do you not then feel convinced that, if the violent in this country were inflamed by triumph and possessed of power, you could, for a time, look to no human defence but that which you had yourselves prepared, and that your condition would be hopeless, if the emergency found you disunited?

On the other hand, suppose yourselves provided to the extent of your power for such an event; can you have any doubt that you would present an obstacle to the progress of crime, such as to make your adversaries feel that they would be highly indiscreet in urging success to extremity? If you were in an attitude which showed that you would not fall tamely, various considerations would make it manifest that to provoke a contest with you would be to challenge defeat; you would afford England, also, time to know the wrong and maintain the right, and to come, if her interposition were called for, an auxiliary, not an avenger. This would be understood; your strength and union would compel forbearance even from avowed enemies, and the certainty that Protestants, throughout all Ireland, were of one heart and mind, would act as a protection in those parts where Protestantism was weakest. I repeat, then, that if you anticipate the day of trial I have imagined, you will acknowledge, that to be unprepared and divided when it came, would be ruinous; that safety could be found only in union and determination.

And now, I would submit for the dispassionate judgment of all who hear me, this question,-is it chimerical to apprehend, that, if you continue regardless and disunited, the projects for the dismemberment of the empire may be successful? The plans to effect that mighty object are artfully contrived-they are prosecuted with energy;-and if you, who think the maintenance of British connection indispensable to the security of your own personal interests, regard with indifference the progress of efforts, which, if not resisted, will add your individual ruin to the national overthrow; what right have you to expect, that others who have no such interests as yours to stimulate their vigilance, will be quicker to discern the danger, or more resolute to withstand it?

On whom will you cast your care, if you are untrue to yourselves? Are you justified in expecting that maxims of general policy, or a sense of official responsibility shall exercise over those to whom the interests of the country have been confided, a more effectual and a happier influence than public feeling and personal concern have acquired over you? Or are you justified in imagining that either the qualities of those distinguished statesmen, who are now in places of power, or the circumstances in which they have to discharge difficult duties, will allow you to be released from anxiety for the general good? I shall not recite again the catalogue of the names and endowments of his Majesty's Ministers. You have already heard their characters sketched by a master's hand. But there were one or two whose connexion with this country renders it almost unavoidable that I should recal them to your remembrance.

The Right Hon. Charles Grant was a Secretary here, and tried his experiment of indulgence, as the true philosophy by which he could sway our fiery populace. What was his success? He conciliated the country into insurrection—an insurrection which extended its outrages to the suburbs of the metropolis. Crime was encouraged by his indiscriminating forbearance; information was withheld from the government, because it was not unreasonably thought, he undervalued or neglected it; and when the natural result of mistaken indulgence and culpable remissness had been experienced, when evils, which Mr. Grant appears never to have anticipated, were fearfully realized; he made an imperfect, although melancholy compensation for the crippled gait at which his disabled justice had proceeded, by stimulating it into revenge. He assented to an act of parliament which suspended the constitution, and subjected the rural population to the rigor of an extreme, but unavoidable severity. I remember well the days and the nights of his lax government, and of the rigid rule by which it was succeeded. I remember when it was described as the last business of the night, before retiring to repose, within a guarded and garrisoned town, to ascend to the house-tops, and count, over the unprotected lands, the flames in which, it might be, slumbering families were consumed, and to listen for shouts

and shrieks which smote the stimulated sense, or disordered fancy created, but which the memory will retain for ever. I remember, too, when shrieks, more terrific than fancy ever heard, arose round the tribunals where the doom of sudden and life-long separation was pronounced-and at the gibbets, where conciliation suspended its sacrifices; and I can in all sincerity declare, that I do not know whether I thought the connivance of the supine Secretary more to be abhorred because of the foul atrocities it encouraged, or because it exacted from returning justice so terrible a retribution. (B) Does your experience of Mr. Grant justify you in expecting that he will be a faithful and wise guardian of the legislative union ?

We had also Lord Melbourne as a Secretary here; and, under the protection of his rule, those multitudes were arrayed who marched through the country in military order, and with more than military intimidation. I will not dwell on his brief administration. Short as it was, you have reason to remember it. You know well, that during his brief tenure of place, the elements of disorder became heightened, so as eventually to compel from the unbending resolution of one Minister, and the pledged opposition of another, that concession, without grace or expediency, of which we are now to bide and brave the stormy consequences.

We have here a noble Lord (our Chancellor) appointed, that he might guide one Viceroy into the right way, retained, that he may keep another in it. What has been his political life? More remarkable for its failures than even for the rare talents which render such failures incomprehensible. He never made a pledge which was not violated by the parties in whose behalf he made it; or gave in their name a promise which they did not break: he never uttered a prediction which events did not falsify, or carried through the Houses of Parliament a legislative enactment, upon which, in the circumstances of its failure, rashness or

imbecility was not made manifest. I do the Noble Lord wrong. There was one promise to which England may yet find that he has been disastrously faithful. He has erected one monument, of which as a creation of eloquence and taste, Ireland may justly